


rest

by CubicBoron



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: F/M, Hallucinations, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CubicBoron/pseuds/CubicBoron
Summary: The Warp tells you strange things, sometimes, uses your memories against you and twists them into things that never were. Russ knows this, but he's tired.(AKA, Russ hallucinates about a soldier woman he knew back in the day.)





	rest

"Mm." Russ groans, blinking a few times when the bright light of the midday cycle refuses to adjust down, shining directly into his eyes from above, lamps set into a plain metal ceiling. He turns his head and takes stock of his position, gathering that someone had moved him to a… couch? His legs drape over the arm: it is sized for a baseline human.

"I must be dead." He remarks simply to a familiar back, instead of asking any questions, and the probably-entity cocks her head without pausing from whatever she's doing. The room is mostly silent, aside from the general humming of a ship and, strangely enough, the drip of water. A soft flick accompanies the changing of the minute on the clock wedged in the corner that he can't see but knows is there.

"How do you gather that?" She asks, and he figures that he's hallucinating — not all too uncommon these days, unfortunately. Whether he's actually dead or not, he's not sure, but his head hurts like a bitch and he has a vague memory of crashing his vessel into a looming shape that he couldn't quite distinguish. The probably-entity looks exactly like her, from the back at least, even though he remembers clearly the news that the lieutenant had died a good seven millennia ago, long before he had entered the Eye. It had dredged images of her, among other people, from his mind before, twisted and distorted them, made the mockeries of the people he had loved blame and shout and sneer, but this one does none of them, so he decides to relax for the moment, to pretend that this is simply one of the meetings they had occasionally indulged in when they were in the same area.

Instead, he says, as probably-entity finishes her task and turns to face him, leaning her good hip against the table in lieu of using her cane, "All the angels are in the Uppland, but I can see you."

She huffs a breath of laughter, in her peculiar way that had always managed to sound self-deprecating and truly amused at the same time, and rebuffs, "I think angels are supposed to have four functioning limbs." She takes a few strides toward him, sitting in the small space left of the cushion, leaning over him to place a cool hand on his forehead. Damn his memory, because even the temperature of her skin is exactly as he remembers, the way she checks his health though she had readily admitted that it was more folk than science. He could kill the probably-entity right now, unarmoured and vulnerable as it is, but it looks like her and feels like her and he's so _tired_. He remembers abruptly his promise ( _as if he could ever forget_ ) when they had first met. He had vowed that he would marry her, and she had laughed and  _throne_ she was beautiful, and he had never been one to settle down, but neither was he one to back down from a challenge.

"Dead, no, nor the Uppland." Probably-entity says, and then kisses him. The real person had never done that, but this one does not suddenly sprout claws or new limbs, does not harm him ( _although his hearts ache and twist and that hurts_ ), does not breathe toxins and disease deep into his lungs ( _although he feels he cannot breathe and he knows why_ ), and he lets her. The kiss is not the passionate kind he had fantasized about in the day, instead more as he had dreamed of when his subconscious denied not the truth of what he wanted. Her hair tickles his face, free from its usual tight gathering, and he wraps his hand gently around the arm braced next to his head. It does not last long, and she still looks the same as before.

"I'm tired." He admits, truthful, in answer to her unasked question, and she smiles with the crooked, half-sad twist he remembers so clearly. Nimble fingers tuck his hair behind his ear, as she tells him, "I know. Get some rest."

He does.

**Author's Note:**

> Claudia Jenkins was an Imperial soldier toward the end of the Great Crusade. She caught the attention of Russ during a chugging contest with her squadmates, and they happened to bump into each other many times in the years following (in part due to his own intervention), forming somewhat of a rapport, especially following an injury which practically ruined her right leg. Although she never directly reciprocated his approaches and rebutted his vow to win her hand no matter what, Jenkins returned many of his feelings toward her. She died approximately thirty standard years after the end of the heresy, in the mid-forties of m31.


End file.
